Rango the Video Game Preview

Share.

Actual movie assets give this game a leg up.

By Nicole Tanner

In March, Nickelodeon and Paramount will release the latest project from Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski. An animated film about a chameleon with an identity crisis, Rango features the voice of Johnny Depp and the beautiful art of Industrial Light and Magic. I recently got a sneak peek at Rango: The Video Game, which will be shipping out alongside the movie, and it's visually stunning to say the least.

Though the three levels I was shown were pre-alpha, Rango looks fairly polished, thanks in part to the fact that it's already been in development for more than a year, a rare occurrence for a movie-based game. Another reason Rango looks so great is that all of the character assets have been made by ILM, themselves, rather than a developer's best stab at a copy. This not only gives Rango a very cinematic look, but also frees up the developer to spend more time on gameplay.

Instead of regurgitating the exact chain of events from the movie, the developers have chosen to feature Rango's "Tall Tales" as the centerpiece of the gameplay. In the film, Rango convinces those around him of his greatness by telling a number of stories, and these are the inspiration for the game. Besides providing different backdrops, these stories also lend themselves to different types of gameplay, and the developers said no two levels will play exactly the same.

During my brief demo, I saw basic third-person shooter gameplay in a Wild West environment, a golf game involving zombies, and an action game set inside a video game complete with pixilated enemies. I didn't actually get to play the game, so I can't say anything about how the gameplay feels, but it certainly looks beautiful, and that's a good start.